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Brock Samson
Brock Samson is one of the main characters on the Adult Swim show The Venture Bros., serving as a parody of Race Bannon and other supercompetent individuals in adventure serials; his name is a play on Biblical strongman Samson, with whom Brock shares an indestructible nature and, until recently, long hair. He is voiced by Patrick Warburton. History Brock was born to a single mother in Omaha, Nebraska, apparently sometime in the late 1950s/early 1960s; he is one half Swedish, one quarter Polish, and one quarter Winnebago Indian. He has one brother who has never been named or featured on the show. Sometime around the late 1970s he received a football scholarship to an unnamed college, which he attended with Dr. Venture and Pete White. Brock's college career ended one fateful afternoon when he accidentally killed Tommy, the quarterback, during practice; out of remorse, Brock got drunk, then went back to his dorm and vented his frustrations by nearly killing Dr. Venture and several other students in a fit of rage. The chain of events led to Brock being expelled and joining the military; around 1979, Brock was drafted to the Office of Secret Intelligence, a CIA-type organization of super spies. There, he was trained by Hunter, a maniac secret agent (implied to be, if not only modeled on, Hunter Thompson) whose guidance led to Brock being granted a Level 8, Class A license to kill, which he uses with great fondness. (He tends not to notice when it expires, however). The time between Brock joining the Office and becoming Dr. Venture's bodyguard has never been addressed, except for a brief anecdote involving he and KGB agent Molotov Cocktease falling in love with each other after she killed his partner and he (Brock) gouged out her eye and murdered her father. Appearance Brock is drawn in an exaggerated fashion to everyone else on the show, towering above them and displaying massive muscles and an oversized head. His mullet hairdo has become a trademark of sorts, to the point that his loss of it after the events of the Season 1 finale was mentioned in a TV Guide synopsis. Over the course of Season 2 his hair has been drawn steadily longer in each episode as he regrows it; in addition, from Season 2 onward, Brock sports long mutton chop sideburns. In keeping with the out of time theme of the show, Brock is usually drawn in mens clothing styles popular in the 1970s: Four pocket sport shirts, skin-tight polo shirts, pastel colored pants, white shoes, and side-zip ankle boots are all recurring items of clothing in his wardrobe. Personality and Relationships Brock is a man who typically embodies the 'strong, but silent' stereotype, usually speaking in a low, gravelly murmur and maintaining a casual aura. However, he also has a hair-trigger temper which causes him to snap at the slightest provocation; even touching him on the shoulder at an inopportune moment can cause him to fly into a fit of rage, during which he exhibits a near super-human strength and ability to take almost any kind of physical punishment imaginable: Over the course of the show, he has been run over with a van, shot point-blank range in the shoulder, struck with over two dozen sedative tipped darts, buried alive, and exposed to the vacuumn of space, with the most severe result being that Brock was merely knocked unconscious. In Season 2, it was learned that Brock is also oblivious to foreign objects becoming lodged in his body: During surgery, it was discovered that Brock's body harbored four bullets (plus one he was to be treated for), a blowgun dart, three shark's teeth, a bayonet tip, a twisted paperclip, and some buckshot, all without Brock realizing it was stuck inside of him. Brock's ability to endure pain is matched only by his ability (and zeal) to harm others: he is capable of (and quite willing to) murder anyone or anything at a moment's notice, often in a gristly or severe fashion: he has proven himself capable of gutting a polar bear in a manner of seconds, used his own rectum to crush a man's hand, and on at least one occasion urinated onto the corpse of one of his victims. Brock's only restricition on killing seems to be the use of firearms: he refuses to use guns, instead preferring his own hands, bladed weapons, or blunt objects. He does, however, appear to make an exception for projectile weapons, expressing a fondness for net cannons, but complaining that they never work properly. Brock has an avuncular relationship with the Venture boys, especially Hank, who in turn idolizes Brock. He shows greater concern for their well being and development than Dr. Venture ever has, expressing his fears that Hank is insane and that Dean if effeminate (though he cannot quite bring himself to totally verbalize the latter). Brock also likewise cares greatly for Dr. Venture; when Venture once rhetorically asked "Brock, what would I do without you?" Brock replied dead-pan, "You'd have died." In Season 2, it was revealed that Brock's relationship to the Ventures has developed to the point that he considers them his family ("Hate Floats"). Recurring themes Brock exhibits several stereotypical hypermasculine behaviors and traits, each of which has become the topic of a recurring joke on the show: * Muscle cars: One of the show's signature vehicles is Brock's red 1969 Dodge Charger, which he maintains and cleans with a near obsessive interest. On several occasions, the car has become an instrument of death and destruction, as Brock has utilized it to fatally run down dozens of The Monarch's henchmen and (while chained to the roof and guiding H.E.L.P.eR through the steps of driving a stick shift) injure Jonas Venture Jr. The latter act--which involved crashing the car through a plate glass window after accidentally setting it abalze--severely damaged the car, leading to Brock's needing to repair it in Season 2. In Season 2, it was also revealed that Brock has booby-trapped his car against hotwiring by implanting a flame thrower in the steering wheel which goes off if an object other than his key is inserted into the ignition. * Womanizing: Brock has been demonstrated to be able to seduce nearly any woman he wants merely by looking at them. His sexual conquests run the gamut from sleazy (middle-aged prostitutes and overweight strippers) to bizarre ("The Queen of the Ant People") All of his womanizing, though, seems to be Brock's way of coping with never being able to consumate his relationship with his arch-nemesis and true love, Russian super agent Molotov Cocktease, who wears a titanium chastity belt to ensure she never loses focus on her missions. Whenever the two cross paths, they engage in vicious, sadomasochistic foreplay which goes nowhere, leading to Brock destroying the nearest inanimate object as a means of stress relief. * Rock music: Brock is a devotee of Led Zeppelin; at least one Led Zeppelin reference appears in the majority of the show's epiodes, sometimes subtly (a sample of one of their songs playing while Brock is shown onscreen) or overtly (Hank going through Brock's collection of Led Zeppelin LPs; Brock drawing the Led Zeppelin logo instead of filling in the essay portion of a written exam). Adventures Although the Venture Bros. takes place in a bizarre world in which random, outlandish occurances are the norm, Brock's own personal adventures seem to rival those of every other character: he has gone on a killing spree through the Monarch's air base, helped smuggle Sasquatch and the Bionic Man to safety, got buried alive in Tijuana, and taken part in a blood-soaked raid on an amusement park, among other things. Category:The Venture Bros. characters